The present invention relates to support garments such as brassieres, body-shaping panties and briefs, and the like.
Designers of support garments are in a never-ending quest for increased levels of support and shaping while improving the comfort to the wearer and reducing the cost of manufacturing. These factors tend to be mutually exclusive to some extent. With conventional brassieres, for example, greater support and shaping have generally been achieved only at the expense of reduced comfort, particularly in the case of underwire brassieres. It has also been necessary in general to use the cut-and-sew process to make brassieres providing substantial support, as exemplified for instance by U.S. Pat. No. 4,372,322 issued to Stern et al. A brassiere made in this manner may consist of more than a dozen separate fabric pieces individually cut out and sewn together. One advantage of the cut-and-sew method is that different areas of the brassiere can be given different properties, since the various fabric pieces can be of different knits, different yarns, etc. It may be advantageous, for example, to make some portions of the brassiere resiliently stretchable to hug the wearer""s body, while other portions are relatively unstretchable for greater stability. The cut-and-sew method, however, entails a great number of cutting and sewing operations, and therefore is relatively costly. The resulting seams in the brassiere can also be uncomfortable and are often visible under close-fitting clothing.
Accordingly, methods of fashioning garments from circularly knit fabrics have been developed in an effort to improve the speed and efficiency of production and to reduce the number of unsightly and uncomfortable seams. For example, commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,479,791 and 5,592,836 disclose methods for making non-underwire brassieres from circularly knit tubular blanks. The brassieres are made from single-ply tubular blanks that have a turned welt at one end to form a torso-encircling portion of the brassiere. A series of courses for defining cups and front and rear shoulder straps are integrally knit to the turned welt. The brassiere requires sewing only for joining the front and rear shoulder straps to each other. The circular knitting process greatly reduces the amount of human labor required to fashion a brassiere, thereby reducing the cost of manufacturing significantly, and the brassiere has a greatly improved appearance under close-fitting clothing.
The potential drawback of the seamless circular knit process is that a garment made in this fashion may not provide as much support and shaping as a conventional cut-and-sew garment, unless deliberate steps are undertaken to improve the support and shaping. For instance, the ""836 patent discloses modifying the knit structure along outer edges of the cups nearest the wearer""s arms to form panels having a greater resistance to coursewise stretching than the remainder of the fabric blank. The relatively unstretchable panels provide increased lift and support.
As another example, commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,287,168 issued Sep. 11, 2001 describes a circular-knit brassiere made as a two-ply structure by knitting a single-ply fabric tube and folding it to form a two-ply tube from which the brassiere is cut. The knit construction in the central panel between the cups is modified so that it is substantially less stretchable than the remainder of the brassiere, thereby providing greater stability to the cups. The brassiere even in non-underwire form provides a reasonably good level of support, while being considerably more comfortable than a traditional underwire, and the manufacturing process is significantly less costly than a conventional cut-and-sew process. However, women who are accustomed to the reassuring feeling of underwires pressing against the body beneath the breasts may perceive the absence of that feeling as a lack of support. What would be desirable is a substantially seamless non-underwire brassiere giving the wearer a feeling similar to that of an underwire brassiere. Additionally, it would be desirable to be able to easily tailor the support and resistance to stretch of different areas of a brassiere or other support garment without having to use the costly cut-and-sew process.
The present invention represents a further development in the technology of support garments as described above. In accordance with the present invention, a two-ply support garment with differential stretch and support is made by positioning a heat-bondable polymer film between two fabric plies in one or more selected areas that will become portions of the garment, heating the film to cause the film to bond to the plies in the one or more selected areas, and fashioning a two-ply garment from the resulting fabric blank. The film bonded between the plies increases the resistance to stretching of the fabric and thus provides increased support and/or shaping properties to the area(s) of the garment in which it is located. The invention thus provides a relatively easy and inexpensive way to precisely tailor the support and shaping of various regions of a support garment while avoiding the time-consuming and costly cut-and-sew process. Furthermore, although the preferred heat-bondable film is substantially transparent, the film when bonded between the fabric plies increases the opacity of the fabric, providing enhanced modesty in those areas in which the film is located. The film can also be colored, if desired, to reduce the transparency of the film and thereby provide further-enhanced modesty.
In preferred embodiments of the invention, heat-bondable films of different resistance to stretching can be used in various regions of a garment to provide different degrees of support and/or shaping in those regions. The different resistance to stretching can be accomplished by varying the thickness and/or material properties of the film. In particular, the modulus of the film can be different in different regions of the garment.
A preferred film comprises an elastically stretchable polyurethane film. The film can be made to have a relatively low resistance to stretching for providing resilient support in certain regions of a garment, such as in lower regions of the cups of a brassiere. The film can be made to have a relatively high resistance to stretching to substantially prevent stretching in other regions of the garment, such as in the central region between the cups of a brassiere.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, a fabric blank for making a brassiere is formed by circularly knitting a fabric tube and folding the fabric (either in tube form or after slitting the tube lengthwise to form a flat blank) to form the two-ply blank. The heat-bondable film preferably is positioned to extend over bottom portions of the cups, while the fabric plies in the remainder of the cups are not bonded together. The bottom portions of the cups are thereby made substantially less stretchable than the other portions, thus enhancing the support where it is needed. If enhanced modesty is desired, the heat-bondable film in the bottom portions of the cups can be extended up to cover the nipples. The heat-bondable film can also be provided in other areas, such as in the central panel between the cups. Preferably, the film in the central panel has a greater resistance to stretching than the film used in the cups. The heat-bondable film can also be provided in the portions of the brassiere that extend below the cups and from the outer edges of the cups around the wearer""s back if it is desired to reduce the stretch in these areas. Preferably, each type of heat-bondable film to be included in the garment is cut to the desired size and shape and is then positioned between the plies and heat and pressure are applied to the plies to bond the plies together. The invention thereby makes it easy to tailor the support of various regions of a garment in a precise manner.
A two-ply body-shaping panty in accordance with the invention can be provided with shaping panels having a relatively higher resistance to stretching than the rest of the panty, by positioning appropriately configured pieces of heat-bondable film between the plies of a two-ply fabric blank and heating the film to bond the film to the plies. The blank is then used to fashion a panty. Other types of support garments can also be made according to the principles of the present invention.
The heat-bondable film can be heated by various techniques. For instance, the garment with the film disposed between the plies can be placed in a heated press and pressed between the heated press members. Alternatively, the film can be ultrasonically heated to bond it to the fabric plies.